Sunday, January 17, 2016

A lingering question...

          By now I've read far past the point where this was brought up, but I'm still not sure what to make of the following line from Robert Frobisher in the Letters from Zedelghem:  "Ewing puts me in the mind of Melville's bumbler Cpt. Delano in 'Benito Cereno,' blind to all conspirators- he hasn't spotted his trusty Dr. Henry Goose [sic] is a vampire, fueling his hypochondria in order to poison him, slowly, for his money" (Mitchell 64).  Though I doubt his medicine is helpful considering "the whites of my [Ewing's] eyes have a lemon-yellow aspect & their rims are reddened & sore", medicine wasn't exactly the same around 1850, so Dr. Goose's intentions are likely far from poison (Mitchell 39).  And while it is true that Dr. Goose decided join Adam Ewing on the ship, the Prophetess, after Ewing told him about his so called Ailment, I feel like there are reasonable explanations.  It was Cpt. Molyneux who requested Dr. Goose to join them as Ship's Doctor in the first place, and it was on this offer that he set sail on the Prophetess.  And if Dr. Goose did decide to go because of Ewing's Ailment, than couldn't it just as easily be a sign of friendship and generosity?  Besides, if Dr. Goose were poisoning him for money, he would require some kind of payment for his medicine.  But instead, "Henry [Goose] bridled when I [Adam Ewing] mentioned his fee.  'Fee?  You are no valetudinarian viscount with banknotes padding his pillows!  Providence steered you to my ministrations, for I doubt five men in this blue Pacific can cure you!  So fie on 'Fee'!  All I ask, dear Adam, is that you are an obedient patient' " (Mitchell 36).  So now I have to ask what Mitchell's purpose was in including this contradiction.  Is Ewing right in being "tearful with gratitude" and Frobisher's reliability as a narrator is called into question (Mitchell 36)?  Or is Mitchell drawing the reader's attention to an idea they wouldn't otherwise see?  Since the Pacific Journal section is written strictly from Ewing's perspective, we only see Dr. Goose in the same good light Ewing sees him in.  As readers, we are as "blind to all conspirators" as he is.  Sometimes it takes one to know one, and after mooching off his mentor, Vyvyan Ayrs, perhaps Frobisher is more apt to see Dr. Goose's true vampiric nature and his evaluation should be taken seriously.

2 comments:

  1. A nicely written post, with a good discussion of the point of view of various sections and their relationships to each other.

    To answer your question, you might consider the ideas about human relationship/behavior that the book develops.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I do not think that Dr. Henry Goose is trying to poison Adam Ewing, either. I wonder if Frobisher is drawing a connection between Dr. Goose and Ewing, with himself and Ayrs. This could be a huge stretch, but maybe the point of Frobisher mentioning the possibility of Dr. Goose using Ewing, could be because of Frobisher's own situation where he sometimes is not very fond of Ayrs, who seems to use Frobisher to compose his music, without crediting Frobisher very much. Good discussion! :)

    ReplyDelete